Chosen, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You don't show your righteousness by never falling, you show your righteousness by what you do when you fall. Falling just demonstrates that you're not perfect, but getting back up again demonstrates that you believe the gospel and you understand that your righteousness is a gift from Christ. You've disappointed yourself again, you've messed up in your marriage, you've fallen flat in your face.

So what? Get up and believe the gospel. Welcome back to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Okay, I'm positive you've asked yourself this question if you've known Jesus for any length of time. If God has already chosen the people who will be saved, then why do we have to keep sharing Christ with people? As Pastor J.D. continues in our new Love Incorruptible study today, he shows us that while predestination contains some of the greatest paradoxes in our faith, we can and should gain confidence in disciple making by knowing we were saved in order to bring other people to Jesus. We should feel empowered to say to him, yes, God, use me for your purposes. You're joining us right at the beginning of our new teaching series we began yesterday through the book of Ephesians. So let's rejoin Pastor J.D.

in a message he titled Chosen. If you're a Christian, it's because God chose you. If you're not, it's because you have chosen to reject God. And the Lord is not willing that you should perish. He wants you to come to repentance.

And he said, if you will just come. Are you chosen? In one sense, you're the one that has the power to decide that. If you choose to repent and believe in Jesus, then you're chosen.

The choice is entirely yours. Paul continues, verse five, in love he predestines us for adoption through Jesus Christ. Adoption, what another beautiful concept. Adoption means that we weren't part of his family, but he made us part of his family. We weren't his, you know, mostly good, but wayward kids.

We were rebels, members of a traitor race. And he said, I'm going to choose to make you mine. And he does that joyfully.

The word translated purpose in verses five and nine is, and the Greek language means kind intention. God didn't just plan and execute the process of our salvation. He enjoyed the process.

It cost him everything, cost him the blood of Jesus to accomplish it, but he enjoyed every second of it. I've got several friends of our family who have adopted. And one of the things that they'll tell me is when you walk into that adoption place and you see your child for the first time, sometimes overseas, even if that child has got all kinds of physical or emotional problems, there's this sense in your heart. No one ever begrudgingly adopts.

I've known a lot of really generous people, but I have never known somebody who was willing to sacrifice one of their own kids, biological kids, in order to obtain another. What God is saying is I chose to adopt you, even though it cost the life of my son. And I didn't begrudgingly adopt.

I enjoyed it. The kind intention that was in my heart. I walked into the orphanage of sin. I went up to the sons and daughters of the enemy race, who were deformed and defiled by sin and love welled up in my heart.

And I said, I'm going to make that one mine. Verse 13 and 14, Paul finishes his explanation of what God did when he saved us. Verse 13, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. By the way, do you notice in this chapter, we see the whole Trinity involved in the process of our salvation? The father purposes, the son redeems.

Now we see the Holy Spirit seals. Our salvation is an affair of the entire Godhead. Specifically, the Holy Spirit, Paul says, is the one who ensures to us that God is going to finish what he started.

That's why in verse 14, Paul calls him the guarantee of our inheritance. What he's referring to is the concept of earnest money. When you're trying to give somebody a promise that you're going to follow through on a deal, a lot of times you give them what we call earnest money, which means I'm going to give you this money. That's my assurance to you that I'm going to come back and claim it. I'm going to come back and close this contract because if I don't, then you can just keep this money.

And it's a sizable enough amount of money that you can be assured that I'm going to come back and not leave it on the table. So Paul takes that concept and said, what did God give you as earnest money? He put part of himself into you. How do we know he's going to complete his work in us and take us to heaven?

Well, because he's already put the best part of heaven into us. I think of the Holy Spirit in some ways like the moon, the moon that we see. When you go outside at night and you look up, every night, virtually the sun virtually disappears. Now we can't see it.

It's, you know, it's obscured from our view, but you can look at the moon and what you're seeing in the moon is the reflection of the sunlight, which is a promise that in a few hours that sun's going to come back up. What the Holy Spirit in our hearts radiating from our hearts is like the presence of God that assures us that Jesus is going to come back and finish what he started. There's one other phrase I want to make sure that we see before I close this section of our message, because until you learn this truth, a lot of the rest of this is not going to make sense. It's the repeated phrase, verse six, to the praise of his glory. Why does God do things the way that he doesn't? Why did God set up the path of salvation this way? For the praise of his glory. He saved us the way that he did to demonstrate his glory. That's not the only place, by the way, in the Bible where we're taught that.

In fact, not by far. Ezekiel 36, look at this. God talking to Israel. This is what the sovereign Lord says. It's not for your sake, people of Israel, that I'm going to do these things. It's for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. It wasn't for your sake. It was for my namesake.

That's what I was really after. Psalm 23, four, a verse that I memorized with my seven-year-old son the other night for his Awana thing. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.

It was for his namesake that he did it. Handful of really quick thoughts there, and I can't spend a long time here, but first, if I had to pinpoint the primary corruption that sin has had in our thinking, it is our unquestioned assumption that we are the center of the universe, that the whole universe exists for us, and the most important thing is our well-being and our good. Even when we think about God, we think about it in terms of how he can complete us, how he can help us, and how he can take us to heaven. You are not the center of the universe. Even your salvation was pursued in a way to bring glory to God. Second, until you understand this, that God's glory is the center of everything, nothing that God does is really going to make sense to you.

Your life is not going to make sense. What God does will not make sense, and you're never going to find fulfillment until you live for his glory. I told you God is like the sun in the middle of our solar system.

Our world only thrives with the sun at the center. Our lives only thrive with God at the center. Third, that means that there's a lot more at stake here in your salvation than just you. God has bound up the glory of his name in your salvation, and so even when you falter, he's going to pursue his work in you for the sake of his name.

That's good news. That's also, by the way, why God sometimes often saves who we think are impossible people, people you would think never could be saved because God likes to do some things where only he can get the credit, right? I mean, for some of you, when God saved you, the angels were like, well, I didn't see that one coming, and God was like, I was just showing off a little bit. That's what God does. Believer, here's what Paul wants to thunder in your soul as you read this first chapter. You are chosen according to the purpose of God, by the power of God, for the glory of God, and that is the greatest, most empowering, most life-giving truth in the universe. You see, it's supposed to fill you with four things.

This is the why of why he told us. Number one, it's supposed to give you assurance during struggle. Assurance during struggle. If we know salvation began on the purpose of God, then we also know that what God started, he's going to finish. Y'all, listen, every God-seeking Christian I have ever known struggles sometimes whether or not they could actually be saved. You look into your heart and you think, could I really be a Christian and still think that from time to time? Could I really be a Christian and have those kind of doubts? Could I be really a Christian and struggle with that?

I've certainly thought that. If God did not choose you because of your goodness, he's not depending on your goodness to keep you saved. One thing I've learned over and over, my flesh is evil. Like Paul said, there is nothing good that dwells in my flesh, and if God took his mercy away from me and his spirit for even a second, I would turn away.

But see, I've got this assurance that what God started in me, Philippians 1-6, he's going to complete it all the way to the day that he's done. I have a pastor friend who went into just a very terrible moral failure. He just embarrassed himself, embarrassed his church. I remember he genuinely repented, or at least as far as I can tell, and he told me not too long ago, he said, you know, he said, this idea that God chose me has become the sweetest doctrine in all of my life. He said, after how badly I messed things up, I realized if this whole thing were about me holding on, then I would surely perish.

I thank God that when I let go, he didn't. Now I know that some of you may say at this point, well, how do you know you're chosen? I mean, maybe my lack of progress in my spiritual life is proof that I'm not chosen. My wife was raised in an environment where they talked about this stuff a lot. She grew up Presbyterian and they knew one thing, it was the five points of Calvinism.

And so she said, you know, I just, I just want, she thought the reason I struggle so much in high school and college is I must not be chosen. And I must be just, you know, kind of somebody who's not saved in the midst of an environment where there's a lot of Christians. Here's how you know, this is how she came to know. If you recognize that Jesus is Lord, if you recognize that he is Lord and you want to submit to him, that is the evidence of the work of his spirit in you. 1 Corinthians 12, three, no man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, which means if you understand that he's Lord and you want to submit to him, that didn't come from you, that came from him. If you even want to be saved, if you want to be reconciled to God, that is the evidence of God working in you.

You need to say yes to it. That's all that it takes. I've described it before, like, um, like waking up in an ambulance. That's what, that's what the Bible does. It like wakes you up in an ambulance. You wake up in an ambulance and the EMT or the doctor is, looks at you as you regain consciousness and says, you've been in a terrible accident. You don't remember it, but here you are revived.

You got tubes coming out and they're sticking, poking you with things. And the doctor says, we saved you. And all I need you to do is lay there and we'll take it from here. We'll keep you alive and we'll restore you back to health.

That's essentially what conversion is. You don't wake up and God says, you better get to fixing yourself. And if you don't do it now, you're going to, no, that's, that's not it. You wake up and he says, Hey, you're in a really bad way.

You're, you're all torn up, but I'm saving you. And if you'll just submit to it, if you'll just lay there and let me do it, then I'm going to transform it and I'm going to bring you healing. So it gives you assurance during struggle. We'll return to our teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to tell you about our new featured resource this month meant to help you take this study of Ephesians even deeper. You know, your church was founded on the hope found in Jesus and with a hope of reaching a specific community with the good news of the gospel.

Well, you know what? God had that in mind when he saved you too. He blessed you to be a blessing. And when he began his work in you, he had in mind your family, your friends, your community, and even other nations too.

And that's what we learned by studying the book of Ephesians. This month, we are offering a Bible study through this book of the Bible called your place in God's plan. It comes with your generous gift to the ministry right now.

So give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgrier.com. Now let's get back to the conclusion of today's message. Here's Pastor JD. Number two, it gives you strength after failure. This truth gives us the power to get back up again after we fail. Because again, I know that what God started, he's going to finish. And I can be sure that even if my today was consumed by defeat, I know that God's decree for my tomorrow is victory. But look at this. Verse four, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

Why? He chose you that you could be holy and blameless before him. That's why he chose you. He didn't choose you to drag you on up into hell. He chose you because you want to do these things in you. Where his workmanship from Ephesians created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand. The word is predestined that we should go and walk in them. He predestined that I would be somebody whose life would be filled with good works and my life would resound to the praise of his glory. Listen, that means the burden of fixing my life is not on me.

God's already decreed it and he's already supplied the power for it. You see, I know that I'm talking to a lot of people in our church who feel so defeated. You think, how am I ever going to get over my lust?

How am I ever going to fix my marriage? How can I be bold and fruitful as a witness? You've challenged us this year of disciple making for each of us to reach somebody.

I just don't see how I'm going to be able to do that. You see, that's the wrong picture of the Christian life. The good works that God has for you. He's already predestined for you and already provided the power for you to go and walk in it. And you can be confident in his plan to use you because that's why he said he chose you. I chose you and ordained you that you would go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit would remain.

You just got to say yes and let me do it through you. He saved you to bring other people to Jesus through you. Let me go back here again real quick and make sure you understand. This is why the scriptures teach us that we're chosen. It's not to unravel the mysteries of how God has worked in your past.

It's to give you confidence about what he wants to do in your future. You shouldn't sit around pondering why God saved you instead of your non-believing friends. You should understand that he saved you for the sake of your non-believing friends. He chose you to bless them.

That's why he said he did it. Finally, all this means that when you fail miserably as a Christian, and you will sometimes, it means you got the strength to get back up. I know I've shared this promise with you before, but it's one of my favorite verses from the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 24-11.

I love this. The righteous man falls seven times and gets back up again. Seven, I've told you.

Seven in the Bible is the number of completion in Hebrew, which means that when somebody does something seven times, it's like they do it continually. I've told you it like this. Imagine you're walking in the mall behind somebody who fell seven times. So the first time you're walking, they fall like that. And then they get back up and then they take another few steps and they fall again.

And what do you do? You pull your phone out of your pocket and you're like trying to get it on, right? A third time, you're posting it. Fourth time, fifth time. At this point, you're not laughing anymore.

You start to get worried. And God falls seven times. That's all he does is fall. We talk about righteous people as if they are people who don't fall. You don't show your righteousness by never falling. You show your righteousness by what you do when you fall. Falling just demonstrates that you're not perfect. But getting back up again demonstrates that you believe the gospel and you understand that your righteousness is a gift from Christ. So you've messed up, you've failed, you've disappointed yourself again, you've messed up in your marriage, you've fallen flat in your face.

So what? Get up and believe the gospel. Number three, hope in trials. I know that God's working in every area of my life to make me a son. That is to the praise of his glory. And I know Paul tells me, it blows my mind, but he tells me literally God has harnessed every molecule in the universe to that end.

Here's what I chose for you. He works all things according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. All things. All things. Even in those areas where I feel victimized or I feel hurt or I just feel unlucky.

Paul tells me that God has been working for my good. I had a test on whether or not I actually believe this literally right in the middle of writing this point. You want to know what it was? My Mac computer. Which I was sworn by people who know that it would never crash.

Never. And right in the middle of writing this point, I hadn't saved it in like 25, 30 minutes, right in the middle of it you'd see the little wheel of death. And I lost 25 or 30 minutes and I was so angry. I cannot tell you.

Come like 25, 30 minutes is down the drain. And then I had this thought, is it really all things that God is working? And I was like, I don't really believe that. This was from Satan right here. This had to be from Satan. But see what this verse tells me is that even in a random computer crash, I got a sovereign God who guides every faulty electronic circuit. I can still be mad at Steve Jobs, but my God is sovereign.

I have hope in all my trials. Number four, confidence in disciple making. People say, well, if God's already chosen those who will be saved, then why do we go share Christ?

That's a great question. Ironically enough for Paul, the fact that God had chosen some, this is going to blow your mind, was why he had the confidence to go and share Christ. And this is the key to understanding why he puts this truth right here in the beginning of the book of Ephesians. You see right about the time Paul went to Ephesus, he stopped in a city on the way where he was getting a lot of opposition. So God tells him in a vision, Acts 18, nine, go on preaching.

Listen to this. Go on preaching, Paul. I know everybody's opposing you. Go on preaching because I have many people in this city. No one's a single Christian now. I've already got many people, means I've chosen a bunch of people in the city. Now, can't you hear Paul? Well, then where are they?

God, I could really use some support right about now. But Paul kept on preaching, knowing that soon they would come. That God had chosen many more people motivated Paul. I heard a missionary one time say that when he first became a missionary, he did not know how he could be a missionary if he believed that God had chosen people. But after serving on the mission field for many years, working with people who were just completely against the gospel, he said, I don't know how I could go on being a missionary if I didn't believe that God had chosen some. I certainly felt that when I was a missionary.

When I was there, just seemed like after a year and nobody was listening, people's hearts were so hard. Unless I believe that God could change somebody's heart and that he had promised to, I'd be convinced people would never believe and I would just give up. The idea that God chooses some to salvation doesn't discourage sharing Christ, it empowers it. You say, well, why share though if they're chosen?

That's one of those things where we're not really supposed to try and figure out the secret things. All that I know is that the more that I share Christ, the more people seem to keep getting elected. That's what I know. The best short explanation, and I've shared this with you before, I'm pretty sure, an old theologian named A.A. Hyde said, does God know the day that you'll die? Yes, he does. Do you think that God knows the day you'll die? Yes, he does. I'm sure he does. Has he appointed that day?

According to multiple places in the Bible, he has. Can you do anything to really change that day? Nope. Then why do you eat? To live. What happens if you don't eat?

You die. Then if you don't eat and die, would that be the day that God had pre-appointed for you to die? Quit asking stupid questions and just eat. Because eating is the pre-ordained way that God has appointed for living. Well, I don't share Christ. Does that mean they weren't chosen? Quit asking stupid questions.

Quit asking stupid questions and just do what God has told you to do because that is the means by which God brings people to salvation. You say, well, that makes my head hurt. Of course it does.

Of course it does. You're in the, you know, seven feet of water in the ocean. Like, oh, how deep it is. I'm like, it's a lot deeper than that.

Just swim out a little farther and you won't be able to ever see the bottom. I share Christ with people like it's all up to me, but I pray to God that they'll receive Jesus and do it with confidence and do it with confidence like it's all up to him. That's the way that Paul wants us to wrestle with this. He doesn't tell us to explain the mysteries of the past.

He does it to give us power for the future. Bow your heads with me if you would. Let me talk first to those of you who are Christians, believers. Christian, listen to me. You're chosen. Can you hear it? Can you hear it from my mouth?

But listen to it. It's from the Holy Spirit. You are chosen. Can you feel the confidence that gives you?

Some of you need to get back up right now because you've fallen again. You need with confidence to know that God has appointed you to be fruitful. Or you can say, God, by faith, because I believe in your work and me, I'm going to say yes, God. Use me for your purposes. I don't see how I can be fruitful. I don't see how I can be used, but yes. I'm going to walk in these good works that you've preordained for me.

Well, you just kind of wrestle with that and soak in it for a minute. To those who are not Christians, listen, you can be chosen. The choice is yours. Jesus said, whosoever will may come. In fact, some of you should realize that the very reason you're sitting at one of our campuses this weekend is because He's drawing you. That's why there's this curiosity, that invitation you got.

It wasn't random. In fact, some of you, sometimes I hear the stories of how you got here and it's just crazy. You realize there's a sovereign God that was saying, come, and He's been drawing you. You need to understand, this is the voice of the almighty God who literally has every member of the Trinity that is involved in drawing you to Himself, and it's time for you to wake up in the ambulance and just say yes. Yes, receive His offer of forgiveness and submit to Him as Lord, and He will save you right now.

There's a lot of things you can't understand, but there's one that you can. He saved you and He's drawing you right now, and you can just say yes to Him and let Him go to work in your life. Right now, as I pray for you, maybe you just open your heart and say, yes, Jesus, will you do what you want to do? I receive your offer of forgiveness and I follow you. Father, I pray for both believers and those who are not believers that they would, God, embrace this and wrestle with it and, God, the beauty of it, that love would overwhelm them.

God, and they would find themselves filled with wonder and how great the love is that you've shown for us. I pray and commit these things to you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Chosen. That's the title of our message today from Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life. J.D., you've told us how through Ephesians we learn that the strength that we need to overcome opposition and obstacles is found in the incorruptible love of God towards us and the unchanging purposes of God for us. But it seems like churches all over the country are experiencing obstacles that may be keeping them from effectively reaching their communities.

Yeah, that's exactly right, Molly. You know, while there are a lot of vibrant, healthy churches, I often encounter churches that just feel like they're stuck. It is God's intention. Not that every church get big, but that every church thrives spiritually and produce disciple-making disciples.

Hey, maybe that's you. Maybe you feel like you're either stuck spiritually or you're part of a church that's stuck. I just want to remind you today that God's intention is not that you spiritually flounder, but that you thrive spiritually. So I encourage you to study the book of Ephesians. We've got a Bible study that we're going to offer you this month to go along with the messages here on Summit Life, and that Bible study is called Your Place in God's Plan. We'd love to give it to you as a thank you gift for your support of Summit Life, and it'll help you get even more out of this incredible letter. You're welcome to request the Ephesian study guide as a token of our thanks when you donate today to support this ministry. It takes friends like you partnering with us to make Summit Life possible. Will you join that mission today?

The suggested donation is $35 or more. And when you get in touch, remember to ask for Your Place in God's Plan. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again Thursday as we continue through the book of Ephesians here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.